


Ritual (5): What It's Really About

by mystery_sock (terebi_me)



Series: Ritual [5]
Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Bad Decisions, Christmas Smut, Engagement Announcement, Excuses excuses, Fisticuffs, Insecure Peter, M/M, Nathan's POV, Non-Chronological, Oral Sex, Petrelli style, Petrellicest, Pre-Season/Series 01, Ritual, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Incest, Sibling Rivalry, magnificent bastard Nathan, total lies, us vs. them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-01-16 09:58:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18519100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terebi_me/pseuds/mystery_sock
Summary: Seven years before the eclipse, at Christmas. Nathan makes a bombshell announcement, and Peter sees things the wrong way (or is he wrong, after all?)...





	Ritual (5): What It's Really About

**Author's Note:**

> [original posting note] This is kind of a Christmas fic, but only in setting - holidays are so stressful! …. It is possible that this fic will make you look at Heidi Petrelli in a whole new way. Maybe! (And possibly Angela Petrelli, too...) :)

_SEVEN YEARS AGO..._

 

3:33 a.m.

Christmas morning, now, the dead silence of the house broken only by the sounds of cloth scraping cloth, wet lips lifting from skin, and the occasional errant gasp.

Nathan had gone home, turned around and come back, sneaking in to his parents' house like a teenager after curfew, meeting up with Peter in the smoking room, all the way at the back of the house, far away from any of the bedrooms. The smell of stale cigar smoke acted as a powerful aphrodisiac on them both; so many times they'd ended up in there, after the parents were asleep. On more than one Christmas eve, for sure. This room was seldom used anymore, and could be locked from the inside. Even that was risky; what if, in the grips of insomnia, Dad had a sudden 3 a.m. craving for a Cohiba and a scotch-and-soda?

The danger didn't stop them. It never really had. They needed to have this out.

 

* * *

 

9:12 p.m.

"What's your motherfucking problem, Peter?"

"What's my problem? My problem is that you found - that you're gonna get married to - some chick who looks just fuckin' like me!"

"You need to keep it down. And you need to pull your head out of your ass. Acting like a two-year-old isn't going to stop this from happening. What the hell, Pete? This isn't about you."

"It's not? Because... it looks a lot like it's... actually about me."

 

* * *

 

3:40 a.m.

They couldn't really be silent, only try to be silent, to control their desperate breaths.

Nathan felt lightheaded, not just from lack of oxygen, but from all the overwhelming feelings he had. Fear and guilt and anger and lust. Excitement, too; sure, it was the kind of giddy feeling he got when he handled guns; the feeling of _This object I hold in my hands could kill someone_.

And love. Not diamond sparkles and red roses love, that kind of love he didn't think existed until he met Heidi (and he did feel it for her; he really did feel the thrill of romance). No, this was the kind of love that was no fun at all. There were no greeting cards for this kind of love, no holiday, no candy. It was real and surreal, true, raw, a force of nature. It was beautiful, but not pretty.

Nathan pushed Peter against the wall, dropped to his knees in front of him. Peter stared wild-eyed down at Nathan, shaking his head slowly. "Don't do this to me," he said in a microscopic whisper, but even with almost no sound, Nathan clearly heard the desperation in it.

"Stay quiet," Nathan whispered back. "You live here. You have to look at them at breakfast tomorrow."

Peter squeezed his eyes shut and wrenched at his overgrown hair, faintly gasping at the first touch of Nathan's hands on him, gasping a little louder at the touch of Nathan's mouth. After that, though, he was as quiet as before, but his fingers dug tightly into Nathan's hair and his shoulder. There wasn't time to sit back and enjoy; they could do that later, in their own beds, with their memories. Right now, though, Nathan was here to get Peter off. If there was an exchange, so much the better, but this was about Peter, about Peter's orgasm, about the balance between them. Putting Peter in his place. Showing him what "it" was really about.

 

* * *

 

9:10 p.m.

A lightning-fast right hook out of nowhere staggered Nathan.

It wasn't really out of nowhere. If Nathan had actually been looking at Peter as Peter came into the kitchen, he would have seen Peter's face, dark as thunderclouds, eyes like wrought iron.

If Nathan had really been thinking, he would have seen Peter's reaction before it happened.

If Nathan had really given a damn, he would have said something to Peter before he announced his engagement at Christmas Eve dinner, in front of family and friends. But just this once, Nathan didn't give a damn. It was his day, a day to make his parents proud and bring the ultimate happiness to Heidi's life so far. And Peter, well, Peter was going to have to be fine with it, wasn't he? Everyone else was going to be overjoyed.

He hadn't let himself think about Peter.

But Nathan had suspected, had planned. He had to make the announcement in the most public of private forums, at the happiest, most family-oriented time of the year. Peter wouldn't make a scene in front of dozens of guests, would he?

After all the congratulations, Peter had suddenly appeared behind Nathan, unsmiling. "I need to talk to you for a minute."

Nathan grinned and waved across the room, leaning down to squeeze Heidi's shoulder. "So talk."

"Alone."

"Tomorrow."

"You said any time. And tomorrow's Christmas. There's gonna be no way."

Nathan met Peter's eyes, and conceded the point. "Honey, I'll be right back," Nathan murmured to Heidi, and kissing her on the cheek, followed Peter back through the dining room to the kitchen. As soon as he made it through the door, he found himself up close and intimate with Peter's knuckles.

"You son of a bitch!" Peter shouted.

Nathan clapped a hand to his stinging face; Peter had caught him right in the scars, and now they were throbbing and stinging like the wounds were fresh. The older brother staggered to the refrigerator and grabbed a cold jar of something, pressing it into his face. Peter looked bitterly amused. If not laughing at his pain, at least enjoying having caused it. Nathan glared at Peter, struggling to fight back the sudden flood of memory...

Peter, at fifteen, wonderingly, gingerly stroking Nathan's tracery of scars, scabs, and half-dissolved stitches, while Nathan hid his face in his hands and wept, for the first and last time, over the things he'd seen in Rwanda. And then his sweet little brother took his hands away from his face and kissed his lips until he felt better, kissed the wounds until they meant something else.

Now, though, he was not so much with the _sweet_ , or the _little_ , or the kisses. Nathan's anger flared. "What the hell was that for? And don't talk like that about our mother. What is your motherfucking problem, Peter?..." He would be happy to hit Peter back, hard, beat the hell out of the guy. But Nathan never hit Peter. He just couldn't bring himself to do it. He could remember too well when Peter was a little baby. Peter was still a little baby, in a lot of ways.

 

* * *

 

9:13 p.m.

"Have I even met her before?"

"Yeah, you met her at... uh... that humane society fundraising party in April. I introduced you."

"April! Like I'm supposed to remember that!"

"That's not my problem. And keep it down; if Ma comes in here, it's your ass on a barrel. I'm everybody's favorite son right now."

"As usual. And I'm just nothing," Peter muttered, his voice bitter as poison. "Nothing."

Nathan wasn't going to let him get away with the usual "poor-me" schtick this time; his face still ached from the punch. "Then make something of yourself. Look at you; flunking out of school, still living at home... I'm doing what I'm supposed to do."

"What about what you _want_ to do?"

"I want to do what I'm supposed to do," Nathan rejoined. "It just makes sense to me. I don't need to rebel. I don't need to go against Dad. I like being a lawyer. I want to get married. I've been wanting to get married for years. And the only reason why she looks like you is because you won't get a haircut. You two look nothing alike." Nathan put the glass jar back into the refrigerator. "Jesus, get over yourself."

All the fight went out of Peter, and now he drooped, leaning against the counters, staring at the ground. Nathan sighed and shook his head, grateful to have won this round, but then Peter spoke up. "She's pregnant, isn't she." It wasn't a question.

The prescient little bastard. It was easier to tell the truth. "Yeah," Nathan replied with a sigh of annoyance.

"When are you going to tell Ma?"

As much as he hated to admit it, Nathan said, "Ma already knows." He watched in dismay as Peter's eyebrows rose, and the fight came back into his little brother's eyes. "It was on her advice that I... um... yeah."

"So you are a son-of-a-bitch," Peter said. "And so am I."

 

* * *

 

3:44 a.m.

Peter whimpered at the uncompromising touch of Nathan's mouth on him. Peter held back with all his might; partially to keep his voice under control, but partially to make it last for as long as it could. Nathan was trying to rush him, trying every trick that he knew to make Peter come, trying twice as hard or as fast, as, one by one, they failed to have the desired outcome. "Dammit, Pete, c'mon," Nathan breathed impatiently.

"I'm not an item on a checklist," Peter whispered back. "I'm not one more thing you have to deal with. You're not an agenda item to me."

"I'm not your boyfriend, either."

"Do you bend her over the bathroom sink and fuck her in the ass like you do me?"

"I haven't yet," Nathan replied, taking Peter's throbbing cock back into his mouth.

Peter wrapped his lips tightly over a moan, squeezing it down to a very faint hum that pushed hard at the inside of his chest. "Do you think about me when you fuck her?"

Nathan actually spoke, not whispered, very quietly to be sure, but Peter needed to hear his crisp tone. "No, Peter, I don't. You know why?"

He went down on Peter again, and finding a particular tracework of thrumming veins, stroked them steadily up and down, milking Peter's cock upward. Peter realized with a helpless sigh that his orgasm was happening despite his self-control. He wasn't controlling that part of himself; Nathan was. And Nathan wanted a mouthful of come, and he made sure that he got it, swiftly and efficiently pulling out every drop, consolidating it in his mouth, swallowing with a lustful grimace and a tiny sigh, a quiver of satisfaction.

God, it was so good. He was addicted.

The pleasure spread out slowly over Peter's body, not in a sudden spasm, but a gradual unfolding no less intense for its slowness. He blinked at Nathan as though he couldn't believe what he had seen.

Nathan finally finished his thought. "I don't think about you when I'm with her, or with anybody else for that matter, because they're not you. They could never be what you are to me."

 

* * *

 

9:15 p.m.

Under the harsh glare of the kitchen lights, Nathan straightened his cuffs. "I gotta get back to the table. If anyone asks about my face, I'm going to tell them that you hit me. Any bullshit excuse you'd like for me to give to them? Because they're gonna ask."

"I don't know. I don't care."

"Fine. Be sullen. But I want you to apologize. You're really out of line here, Peter."

"No," Peter said heavily. "I don't think I will. Eye for an eye. You should have told me. You should have told me a long time ago. You can call me and talk to me about stuff, you know? It's okay. I want to know, even if it's bad stuff. I just don't like surprises."

"You're just jealous, Peter. I'm not replacing you."

"No, you're duplicating me. You don't have to order out for it anymore; you'll have me in-house, and with a real pussy, too." Peter sneered as Nathan rolled his eyes at him. At least he was keeping his voice down. "Good work. Did you take a cheek swab while I wasn't looking one day?"

"She doesn't fuckin' look like you, Pete. She's got blue eyes. And tits. And a decent attitude."

"Tell me one thing," Peter said, putting out his hand to Nathan's shoulder to stop him before he left the kitchen. "Is this over?"

He didn't need to be specific about what "this" was. "This"; the unspoken bond, the simmering just beneath the surface, charging every single moment they spent alone together. Most of the time, the more time they spent with each other, it was fine and nothing needed to be said or done or acted on. They spent more time together now than they ever had in their lives previous, but they still didn't see each other that often because Nathan was so busy. And now Peter knew that Nathan hid things from him, intimate things, things that Peter felt like he had a right to know.

Apparently, Nathan felt differently.

But Nathan met Peter's eyes, and they stared at each other, unblinking, unwavering. "No," Nathan said. "It's never over between us."

"Come see me tonight," Peter said in a low voice. "You owe me."

"You owe me," Nathan countered, louder, stepping away. "I hope you enjoy that coal in your stocking."

 

* * *

 

3:52 a.m.

Peter slumped against the wall, and Nathan stood up and straightened his clothes, licked his lips again. As expected, Peter grabbed Nathan by the front of his jacket and dragged Nathan close for a kiss. "You should stay the night," Peter whispered recklessly.

"Nope, I gotta get home," said Nathan. "I just pray she didn't wake up."

Peter kissed Nathan's chin. "You had to run back to the office to get something."

Nathan shook his head, and straightened his clothes all over again. "If she did, and she asks, I'll tell her the truth - that I came back out here to talk to you."

"Except that we're not talking." Peter grabbed the thick erection tenting the front of Nathan's pants. Nathan took a deep, patient breath, and moved Peter's hands away.

"I have to go," Nathan said. "What are you doing on the night of the eleventh?"

"Uh... I don't know."

"You're coming to my place, then. Nine o'clock? Let me know if you can't make it." Nathan gazed deep into Peter's eyes. "Please try to make it."

"I'll be there," Peter replied, kissing the back of Nathan's hands and then giving them back. "Okay. See ya."

"I love you."

"You sure about that?" Peter countered with a crooked little smile.

Nathan smiled in return. "Really," he said, "I thought you were gonna give me shit because she looks like Ma."

Nathan went back to his car and put the keys in the ignition, turned the car over and let it idle into life. He put his face in his hands and hunched his shoulders, taking in deep, shaky breaths.

Maybe he'd gotten away with it. Maybe Peter had swallowed that lie, the lie that Nathan hadn't even known he had been telling himself. He just wanted a normal life, something like a normal life, at least on the surface. Nobody could prove the truth. But it hurt so much to lie to Peter. Why did Peter have to know him so well, why did Peter always have to see right through him?

Nathan put the car into gear, driving back to his normal life, back to his decoy. Nobody had to know. Even though Peter already did.

**Author's Note:**

> [original posting note] Note: Hope the time-stamps make this a little easier to follow. Yeah, twisted, ain’t it? :)
> 
> [revision posting note] This is in almost precisely the same state as my original post on LJ in April 2007. I am very proud of this story, and as you will see, from this story sprung several more to elaborate on what is "the present" here. It becomes a kind of fractal, immersive universe that spreads infinitely outward. Thanks for reading! Next Ritual to be posted soon!


End file.
